Sabina Mihelj gave a keynote at the 11th annual conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics, held at the National University of Singapore on 19-21 November.
Entitled 'Trust and Disinformation in Times of Illiberalism', the keynote brought together insights from Sabina's book on the illiberal public sphere [link.springer.com], co-authored with Vaclav Stetka, and her ongoing research on disinformation, conducted as part of the (Mis)Translating Deceit project. While political communication research studying the contemporary challenges to democracy has flourished, its dominant theoretical apparatus, steeped in the normative ideals of democratic communication, remains ill-equipped to grasp the nature and depth of recent transformations. Sabina’s recent work, developed with Václav Štětka, offers an alternative framework, informed by scholarly debates on illiberalism and centred on the rise of “illiberal public spheres”. In the keynote, Sabina used this framework to reflect on two other concepts that attracted significant attention in recent years but need rethinking in light of ongoing democratic erosion: media trust and disinformation. Drawing on qualitative audience research conducted over several years in multiple European countries, she showed that the increasing dominance of illiberal public spheres can lead to a shift in the normative ideals that inform citizens’ media trust and guide their engagement with (dis)information. The keynote concluded by reflecting on the benefits of qualitative methods for political communication research in times of normative instability.